SIMHE-Metropolia services has now reached its next step – or even two of them – in making the Finnish education and higher education system more approachable and understandable for the immigrants living in Finland. We launched the monthly Guidance Generalia lecture series in June and now, after the round two in the end of August, it is time to evaluate the outcome.

Don’t you Know, it’s all so simple from early day care to the doctoral level!

Guidance Generalia lecture aims at unravelling the mysteries of the Finnish education system and how to enter in the higher education in particular. The lecture is open for anyone and is advertised on SIMHE’s For Immigrants website and through other networks. We are also introducing guest speakers this autumn from many relevant arenas such as TE-office, National Board of Education, Kela for Finnish Social Security System and so forth to help people to make the most of the events.

For us, who have travelled through the system from early childhood day care to the higher education, all is very smooth and clear; this is how the story goes and we take this highly praised system for granted. However, for those, who come from the outside, it may come across as foggy and almost unreal: there are free meals in the primary and secondary levels of education and what does it even mean to have a dual model in the tertiary level?

Overcoming the language barrier

The first ever Guidance Generalia in June, set the mark for what we wish to reach. We have a service promise to master the lecture in Finnish and in English, simultaneously. It is even possible to have an interpret on our expense, if there is enough demand for additional languages on top of these two.

The limits of our language were certainly not the limits of our world as the June lecture was managed in Finnish, in English and in Arabic with the help of an interpret. Or, perhaps, it was muddled through as having three different languages made it feel like being in an international airport at times.

The message went through to the twenty something participants, even though them, the interpret and I were mopping sweat from our foreheads after two hours of intensive schooling. However, as we are able and capable to develop, the August lecture introduced the renewed state of the affairs with a new set of slides to help to overcome the language malarkey.

We are in this together

August setting was thus thoroughly planned and the session welcomed yet again some thirty participants. This time we were lucky in terms of lingua franca as all participants were able to follow the lecture in English. We managed to create a very reciprocal way of making the education system more familiar to the participants and the lecture passed by with many questions, comments and remarks. Participants were very pleased that someone offers such services just for them and for their needs.

We were also happy to invite the first guest speakers, Bayazidi Saeed and Ahmad Moussa from Uudenmaan TE-Office where they work with highly educated immigrants to support their employment. Mr Saeed and Mr Moussa explained the role of TE-office in supporting education for immigrants during and after their integration program period. They gave an invaluable insight into the TE-office services for independent education.

Expanding the cooperation

Guidance Generalia has proven to add up substance to SIMHE’s service palette. It is also a very good forum to meet up with people to tackle questions that are general to all. Additionally, it enables us to reach those who need more personal support in their individual quest in the Finnish education system.

The next session will take place in September with a guest speaker from the Finnish National Board of Education who will tell us more about recognition of international qualifications in Finland. We are also expanding our horizons as the lecture will be simultaneously streamed to participants in central Finland in cooperation with SIMHE-Jyväskylä and JAMK University of Applied Sciences.

Supporting Immigrants in Higher Education, SIMHE-Metropolia, started its guidance services for educated immigrants, or those who are willing to apply for higher education, in early May 2016. Now that I have had a dozen or so customers visiting me, it is a good time elaborate the outcome by far. I wish to raise few issues that I find important when guiding people with little or no experience in the Finnish society, let alone in our education system and all that lies within.

You are not dealing with the statistics when meeting someone face-to-face

It is somewhat easy to hide behind the statistics and look into the immigration phenomenon through numbers, figures and percentages. There are currently over 200, 000 immigrants residing in Finland for various reasons and the amount is growing year by year. However, statistics do not count, when you have someone sitting in front of you in need of guidance and advice.

At this point, your task is to listen to his or her individual life story and try to make people to see the difference that they are able to make for their lives. Immigrants are often seen as one pool of people and objects, not as capable individuals who are able to make their own decisions.

All my customers have been highly educated and talented people who are just facing new circumstances they were not able to predict. They are ready to make a new start, even to take a step back in their already acquired competence level in order to fit in and fulfil the requirements of our society.

My task is to provide the necessary facts and information to support the process. I am not being naïve as I know the existing hardships and obstacles on both sides, but giving options and possibilities is what matters here.

Knowing me, knowing you is the best I can do

Guidance is always about communication, seeking common grounds and establishing trust between people. I have worked with international degree students from various parts of the world for ten years, so the change in the clientele was not that dramatic to me. I have learnt through experience and my own education in intercultural communication that knowing yourself well is the key for understanding others.

Also, guidance work is first and foremost done through your own personality traits for which I hope to come across as competent, down-to-earth kind of person with a tender heart. Yet this needs to be decided by my customers.

Firstly, I feel humble and privileged to have this opportunity to be able to be one of those, who make Finland and its peculiarities more familiar and less haunting for immigrants. Secondly, my guidance work puts me in the learning curve too as every person needs to be treated not only as a member of a certain group, culture or ethnical background, but as a unique individual. My job is not to fortify the existing boundaries but rather lower them to help us to find the common platform to build our dialogue together.

Thirdly, meeting people from other cultures gives you more than it takes from you as you broaden your horizons through every encounter. If you just let it happen.

Like a beacon shimmering light at night

How do I see the SIMHE project and its objectives after working in the project for three months? It seems to be well needed for sure and has been welcomed by many. There is a constant need for having a place where an immigrant-background people are able to seek for advice in the amazing maze of the Finnish education system and society when searching suitable paths for themselves.

We are not to change the world, perhaps we only just tickle a corner of it, but I find SIMHE and its guidance services to have its stance among other similar activities. I somehow see SIMHE project like a beacon shimmering light at night; you do not see everything clearly at one glance, but you start to get the big picture by each beam of light.

The more familiar you make the system and its demands and possibilities to immigrants, the easier it is for them to find their individual paths in Finland. It takes time, but it’s worth a go for us and them.

We will have the first Guidance Generalia lecture in June, so stay tuned for hearing more about it soon!

Since the last autumn, there has been an intense debate on what should be done in this new situation with a growing number of asylum seekers and immigrants that has exceeded even the wildest guesses. ”Rajat kiinni”, “Close the borders”, has been one approach and on the other hand it has been considered if immigrants could be seen as a resource to benefit Finland. Metropolia’s solution is to offer a service concept produced by the SIMHE project, which is funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The aim is to recognise the competences of highly educated immigrants and to guide them, and those who are eligible to apply to higher education, to interesting and meaningful educational and career paths.

Setting objectives for the project is easier than implementing them into contemporary society.

Mathematical competence, professional engineering competence and digital competence were selected to form the pilot test on recognising engineering competence that was implemented in April at Metropolia. The test parts were compiled by the Metropolia experts in mathematics, different engineering degree programmes and in digital competence. We considered what kind of competence the Finnish employers might value, and on the other hand, we thought that immigrants could benefit from the recognition of competences for example, if they apply to higher education in Finland, as an institution of higher education has already made an evaluation on their competences.

 When choosing the content to the recognition of competence, we looked at the issue from a perspective of integrating immigrants into Finnish society.

30 immigrants participated in the recognition of competence day out of which 28 were male and 2 female. The majority of them were from Iraq, a few from Syria and Afghanistan, one from Iran and one from Belarus. The participants’ age varied between 20 and 44. A few of them had been in Finland for nearly three years, the majority for 6-10 months. It was possible to do the test in Arabic, in English or in Finnish. The language options were based on the fact in which language the participants had filled-in the enrolment form. The results will be ready soon and we will reflect on them as well as on methods used in the recognition of competence together with participants and our experts.

 We need to reflect critically on both – the used methods and the chosen fields of competencies.

Is the recognition of mathematical competence relevant when working as an engineer? Those participating in the pilot, already had a degree, or studies in higher education in the field of technology. Why would someone, who already has a degree, and who has made the official recognition and international comparability of qualifications want to participate in our recognition of competence? What do the participants benefit from recognition of competence will probably not become clear until a long-term follow-up is done based on their individual educational and career paths.

Do the individual’s and society’s perceptions about adequate educational and career paths meet? This is also an interesting question to be considered later.

How do I get a chance to show my competence, attitude, motivation and will to do anything reasonable that would benefit both myself and Finland? How and where can I get more competence that can help me to get a job? These kind of questions are now directed to Metropolia. At this point, I must humbly state that these things we work with in the SIMHE project launched this spring are quite enormous. In the project we will consider the new models to recognise the competence of highly educated immigrants and asylum seekers and to guide them to adequate educational and career paths. This is done together with the Ministry of Education and Culture, Finnish National Board of Education, CIMO, Ministry of Employment and the Economy and the UniPID network.

There is clearly a demand for our new service concept – hopefully employers and educational institutions will grasp this new potential.

Let´s turn the societal debate even more towards the direction of possibilities!